Electronic document editors are widely used in homes and businesses today. Familiar examples of these editors include word processing applications that operate on personal computers (PCs) and note-taking applications that operate on personal data assistants (PDAs). These applications strive to replace paper as the simplest means to record and communicate information. The utility of these applications increase when they can be tied to other software applications, such as drawing applications, spreadsheet applications, web browser applications, and contact management applications. Similarly, the utility of an electronic document editor is increased when the editor can manage certain pieces of information contained in an electronic document that are likely to be of special significance to a user, such as names and addresses.
When an individual takes notes, such as in a business meeting or a classroom, contact information within those notes may be of special significance to a note-taker. For example, an individual taking notes in a meeting may record a person's name and, near the recorded name, put that person's telephone number. This situation is the same whether the note-taker is using a paper and pencil or a free-form electronic document editor. However, in a free-form electronic document editor, or other electronic document editor, certain types of information can be identified by the electronic document editor and tagged.
One example of information tagging is the use of “SMART TAGS” in business productivity computer software applications by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. One such application is “MICROSOFT WORD.” The software application can recognize certain strings of text characters as representing one of a number of categories of data. These categories may include names, physical addresses, e-mail addresses, universal resource locators (URLs), dates, and telephone numbers. When the software application recognizes a string of characters as possibly falling into a specific category of information, the application tags that string. In other words, the application identifies that string within an electronic document as having the characteristics of the data category. The application may provide a visual or other indication to a user through a graphical user interface (GUI) that the data string has been tagged. The application also may provide the capability for a user to act on the data string as a special data type, for example, by allowing a user to add the information to an address book of a contact management software application.
One advantage of taking notes using a free-form document editor as compared to paper and pencil is the capability of searching the notes with a search routine. In other words, a search function of the electronic document editor allows the user to locate a specific word or phrase by designating the word or phrase as a search term. The search routine can look through a large number of pages of notes in a very short time. In contrast, a person searching through paper notes may exhaust a large amount of time while having to review every line of many pages of notes to locate the word of phrase of interest.
Although a search routine in an electronic document editor has advantages over visually, or otherwise manually, scanning pieces of paper, searches through electronic documents have a weakness. A user must know the word or phrase as it appears in the electronic document to locate that word or phrase. This weakness is ameliorated by the capability of a user to insert a search term that the user suspects is located near a word or phrase that the user is actually looking for but that the user does not know its exact content, such as a telephone number. The user can then go to the locations within an electronic document identified by the search routine as containing the search term and visually or otherwise search for the desired information. For example, if a user needs to know an individual's telephone number and the user suspects that the telephone number is recorded in an electronic document near the individual's name, the user can use the individual's name as a search term and browse through an electronic document at each identified location of that individual's name and look for a telephone number. This ameliorating process still requires a user to move to locations within an electronic document identified by a search routine as containing the search term and browse the electronic document manually to find the desired information.
What is needed is a method that combines the technology of information tags with the technology of a search routine. The desired electronic document editor can return, as a result of conducting a search on a search term, tagged information that is located near the search term in an electronic document, such that the user will not have to browse the electronic document to find the information.